Emptiness Itself is Empty

Transpersonal experiences (from the Causal and Nondual levels as per Wilber) shared on this Blog up to this point are all, in my current empirical understanidng, only steps to the ultimate reality which is sunyata. Beyond everything, even beyond God/Goddess and yet so close (in my experiences).It is the way the things naturally are: empty.

“Even emptiness is empty. For example, the emptiness of the bottle of milk does not exist inherently. Rather, it exists in a dependent way. The emptiness of the bottle of milk is dependent upon its basis (the bottle of milk). It is also dependent upon having been designated as emptiness.

Understood this way, emptiness is not a substitute term for awareness. Emptiness is not an essence. It is not a substratum or background condition. Things do not arise out of emptiness and subside back into emptiness. Emptiness is not a quality that things have, which makes them empty. Rather, to be a thing in the first place, is to be empty.

It is easy to misunderstand emptiness by idealizing or reifying it by thinking that it is an absolute, an essence, or a special realm of being or experience. It is not any of those things. It is actually the opposite. It is merely the way things exist, which is without essence or self-standing nature or a substratum of any kind. Here is a list characteristics of emptiness, to help avoid some of the frequent misunderstandings about emptiness, according to the Buddhist Consequentialists:

Emptiness is not a substance

Emptiness is not a substratum or background

Emptiness is not light

Emptiness is not consciousness or awareness

Emptiness is not the Absolute

Emptiness does not exist on its own

Objects do not consist of emptiness

Objects do not arise from emptiness

Emptiness of the “I” does not negate the “I”

Emptiness is not the feeling that results when no objects are appearing to the mind

Meditating on emptiness does not consist of quieting the mind.

Sunyata does not entail inherent qualities or existence; well, what exactly does that mean?

Other terms for inherent existence, gathered from Buddhist and Western sources, would include the following:

the reality of the thing irrespective of culture or language or human consciousness

objective existence

independent existence

true essence

Platonic essence

real existence

ontological existence

the thing as it really is

the thing in-itself

the is-ness of the thing

beingness

actuality

thinghood

perseity

self-sufficient being

self-inclusive being

essential being

instantiation in reality

subject of ontological commitment

the thing’s entitification

the way it really is, regardless of what anyone thinks

the reality of the thing as opposed to its appearance

what science will eventually discover the thing to be

the way God intends the thing to be

“it is what it is”

“it’s like that, and that’s the way it is”.

Therefore, sunyata can only be experienced as it is completely beyond human mental capacities. Before sunyata is
experienced, anatta has to be mastered.